


gonna make it through this year (if it kills me)

by aletterinthenameofsanity



Series: when it feels like the world's gone mad (dark stories) [46]
Category: Daybreak (TV), Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst with a Happy Ending, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Underage Prostitution, M/M, Quarter Quell, burr is President Snow but even skeevier, especially the Daybreakers, i'm back on my hunger games bullshit again, this is hunger games y'all you knew these tags would come, three cheers for found families y'all, turbo and the stem punks are gamemakers and it makes so much sense, wesley crumble josh angelica and eli are all Victors of different Games, y'all knew this was coming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:27:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23409037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aletterinthenameofsanity/pseuds/aletterinthenameofsanity
Summary: Here’s the thing about winning the Games: you never get to stop paying for what you did to survive.If you’re lucky, they get bored of you. You get to go back to your District’s Victor’s Village, get to get addicted on morphling or alcohol and spend the rest of your life wasting away, each night visited by the sins of your past.If you’re unlucky- well, you better pray that you’re lucky, because if you aren’t, there are two possibilities. Either you get to spend the rest of your miserable fucking life playing the part of the Capitol’s plaything, or you refuse to and get to see everyone you love die a miserable death.Either way, there is no way out of the Arena. Every Victor learns this.Even Victors like Josh Wheeler, whose win people think was a fluke. Everyone in the Capitol was betting on one of the Careers going into the Seventy First Games.It turns out that Josh is one of the unlucky Victors. Go figure. District 12 has never been known for being the District of the luck.(Josh Wheeler, making a family of Victors and learning to survive the Capitol.)
Relationships: Eli Cardashyan/Josh Wheeler, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Ms. Crumble | The Witch & Angelica Green & Josh Wheeler & Wesley Fists & Eli Cardashyan, Wesley Fists/Turbo Pokaski | Turbo Bro Jock
Series: when it feels like the world's gone mad (dark stories) [46]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1214802
Comments: 5
Kudos: 57





	gonna make it through this year (if it kills me)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "This Year" by the Mountain Goats.
> 
> Y'all really should have expected this from me. New apocalyptic fandom, my reputation (of sorts) for converting any fandom to my "They Were All Victors" Hunger Games AU. First Umbrella Academy, then Stranger Things, then Power Rangers, then Skam, now Daybreak...I'm probably never going to stop, am I?
> 
> Also, lemme tell you how much of a bitch it is watching Daybreak and reading HG fic for instpiration because the two tones are so fucking different from each other. You have no idea how much the two styles were at constant odds with each others as I wrote. I hope the final product is good enough for y'all.
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoy!

_I've lived through such terrible times and there are people who live through much worse. But you see them living anyway._

_When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children - they live._

_Death usually has to take life away._

_I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die, but I recognize the habit; the addiction to being alive._

_So we live past hope._

_If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough. It's so inadequate. But still bless me anyway._

_I want more life._

**-Tony Kushner**

Here’s the thing about winning the Games: you never get to stop paying for what you did to survive.

If you’re lucky, they get bored of you. You get to go back to your District’s Victor’s Village, get to get addicted on morphling or alcohol and spend the rest of your life wasting away, each night visited by the sins of your past.

If you’re unlucky- well, you better pray that you’re lucky, because if you aren’t, there are two possibilities. Either you get to spend the rest of your miserable fucking life playing the part of the Capitol’s plaything, or you refuse to and get to see everyone you love die a miserable death.

Either way, there is no way out of the Arena. Every Victor learns this.

Even Victors like Josh Wheeler, whose win people think was a fluke. Everyone in the Capitol was betting on one of the Careers going into the Seventy First Games.

After all, District only had one Mentor before him: a woman who won about fifteen years ago who no one could actually remember the name of, who had earned the nickname of Crumble considering how much alcohol and morphling had destroyed her sanity in the aftermath of a massive head injury on the last day of her Games. She’s spent the years since her win drowning her sorrows and ruining herself, and her only help leading up to the Games was a small piece of advice about sunflowers and their use in the Games. No one believed in her ability to Mentor a kid successfully.

And Josh himself- well, he was just the pasty kid from District 12, scrawny and underbaked and underestimated. No one thought he could win, especially not after the last year had been won by a muscled kid from District 2 with a curved sword and a winner’s smile. No one paid a single lick of attention to the lanky District 12 kid, a nobody from the Seam who had run away from the bloodbath on the first day. No one paid attention to the boy who literally ended his second day in the Arena by failing to slice off the head of the boy from Two, instead only succeeding in chopping open his hand. A disappointment to many sponsors, to be sure, up until the moment mutts attracted to the scent of blood had finished Josh’s job for him (as well as eating the girl from One along with the boy from Two) and Josh had suddenly catapulted into the final eight.

And then he'd won, shock and awe to everyone.

Most weren’t sure what to make of him, at first, the outlier Victor whose finger had been amputated on the fifth day of his Games. (An injury, by the way, that Josh had only kept from killing him with infection by the strange gift of maggots in a tube from Crumble.) Josh wasn’t even sure what to make of himself in the aftermath of a Games that had made him a child-killer thrice over, a title he hadn’t been sure that he would be able to stomach earning when he'd stepped up onto the Reaping stage.

But the Capitol had made the decision from him, soon enough. Six months after his win, his Victory Tour had ended in the Capitol and he’d been told that the Gamemakers had decided to set up appointments for him- appointments that KJ, Two’s Victor from four year before Josh, had been nice enough to make him aware of the true purpose of.

-

So it turns out that Josh is one of the unlucky Victors. Go figure. District 12 has never been known for being the District of the luck.

-

Josh finds himself as one of the Victors cursed to remain in the Capitol year-round (save for the returns back to District 12 for the necessary appearances for the Reaping and the inevitable loser's stop on the Victory Tour). He has no way to argue or leave when he gets his first appointment and KJ explains what he has to do and he goes to his first appointment, stomach sinking to his knees.

He wants to scream when he gets back to his new apartment the night of his first appointment. He wants to cry and vomit and scream and so he does. He falls asleep on the bathroom floor, which is where Crumble finds him the next morning. She helps him up off the ground and into bed, where he sleeps the day away until she wakes him up for dinner and his next appointment.

Over the following months, Josh learns to take happiness in the few places he can get it. Crumble, it turns out, is a great chess player despite her craziness and is willing to teach him in the quiet moments where they're both stuck in their Capitol apartments. It's a decent way to pass the time between the horrible things he's forced to do.

And it's not just Josh's Mentor, either- he gets to know Wesley Fists, the Victor from the Games before Games, who likes to train and spar, to practice useless training movements in a way to keep him going without something to move forward towards. He takes Josh under his wing and lets Josh spar with him in the training center, passing the days that they're both stuck in the Capitol.

This is when Josh gets to learn all of the tricks and cheats to fighting with a sword that _would_ have done him so well in the Games, useless tricks that still manage to make him feel a little safer in his own skin despite how powerless he knows he truly is in the Capitol.

Wesley and Josh often find themselves on the roof of their appointments, sharing a joint of the only Capitol drug that won't get them hopelessly addicted, blissed out of their minds and talking about everything. Sometimes Crumble joins them, sometimes it's just the two of them, but either way, it's the one place in the world that they get to be honest. 

It is here, in between sparring matches, that Wesley is willing to talk about what he’s had to go through as another of the Victor whores. He has an arrangement of sorts with Gamemaker Turbo Pokaski, famously scarred in some childhood accident, who has negotiated to keep Wesley's appointments all to himself.

(Josh doesn't know if it's worse or better to be stuck with one Gamemaker instead of several. Josh hates having to keep track of all of his Gamemakers and their likes and dislikes, but to have himself just at the beck and call of one Gamemaker, especially one as infamously jealous and angry as Turbo Pokaski? He doesn't know what he would do.)

They get to talk about their "talents" and how much the Capitol doesn't care about it.

The Capitol gives next to no shits about Josh's supposed talent of photography. Well, he doesn't quite blame them- he doesn't give two halves of a shit, either. Why would he? He never cared and clearly neither do they.

Less than a year ago, Josh killed three kids in near cold blood. Now, he's filling their beds. What is photography to them?

Crumble, on the other hand, has a talent that the Capitol actually enjoys, a gorgeous singing voice that her stylists sometimes manage to get her prettied up enough to match with her appearance. It's not enough to get her out of "appointments"- there are actually rumors that the President himself has taken a nasty liking to her- but Crumble actually seems to genuinely enjoy singing, so that's good enough for Josh. He's happy that his Mentor has managed to find a little something to enjoy while they're stuck in this eternal Arena.

So he has Wesley and he has Crumble and he has things.

Josh fills his apartment with things, things that he thinks his mother might have enjoyed had she not died years ago. Things from things the Capitol calls "musicals." Things that are soft and warm like the blankets that he could never afford after his father died. Things and things and things that give him some sort of comfort in this second Arena he finds himself stuck in.

And on the night when his nightmares get the worst, he finds Crumble by his side, her fingers running through his sweat-matted hair. When he tries to voice his discomfort, tries to explain what a horrible person he is, she just shakes her head.

"We're monsters," Crumble says, but she says it like that's something to take pride in. She smiles at him and entwines her fingers with his and he sees something in her eyes, sparks of that cleverness that netted her the win eleven years ago. "You're a monster, I'm a monster." She leans in just a little and says: "Let's be monsters."

He takes her hand and holds it back and thinks of those kids he killed in the Arena, those children who died so that he survived, the blood and the blades and the beginning of a life trapped, and he says, "You're right."  
  
-

Then, the year after Josh’s win, a little girl from District 3 goes in, a tiny slip of a twelve-year-old girl with a predator’s smile and a hand for explosives. Her name is Angelica Green and she's the first twelve-year-old to ever win the Games.

Josh takes one look at President Burr’s face at Angelica’s crowning ceremony and he nearly bites his tongue clear through at the hungry look on the President’s face. Josh knows that the President will devour any Victor he can, that plenty of them have been on appointments with the President, that nothing, not even Angelica’s age, will prevent the President from taking advantage.

And so Josh silently vows that he will not let the President devour that little girl. He vows that he will do anything possible to keep her out of the beds and hearts of Capitolites, for as long as he possibly can. He will not let the Capitol devour her like it did him, Wesley, and Crumble.

(It is far too late by the time he realizes that he was trying to protect her from the wrong fate.)

Angelica Green has a rather sharp tongue on her, as Josh soon learns over the next few days of galas and interviews. She's feisty and brilliant and bright and that's _dangerous_. Josh knows that if he can’t get Angelica to stop mouthing off, something bad is going to happen. He isn't sure what- his mind is not capable of imagining the full horrors of the Capitol- but he knows that he can't bear to let her get hurt in as horrifying a way as the Capitol is guaranteed to.

So he tries to stop her. He tries to somehow warn her, to coax her away from angering the President, and sometimes he almost fools himself into thinking that he's succeeded.

But one day, the news arrives innocuously in a letter on a golden platter, hand-delivered to the little girl dressed in a rainbow dress, the little girl who had crafted a flamethrower out of the mines and the swords within her Arena.

Josh and Angelica and Crumble and Wesley- they’re sitting there, eating, when Angelica opens the letter. Josh gets to see the very moment Angelica the child, the child-killer, the Victor, has her world shattered as she reads the words that her mother is dead.

The night ends with Angelica crumpled into Josh’s arms as he cradles her to sleep, Crumble on the other side of Angelica on the bed with Wesley sitting in the chair next to Angelica’s bed, sleeping restlessly. Crumble had hummed a lullaby to rock Angelica to sleep and Josh had held Angelica in his arms and Wesley had been there for all of them, a soothing presence at their side.

From that night on, Josh knows that Angelica won’t be returning to District 3 to live in the Victor’s Village. She’s going to be staying here in the Capitol, with them, with their little broken family. Josh, whose father died in the mines when he was only a few years old, Wesley, who's trapped in his arrangement with Turbo, Crumble, whose brain is broken by drugs- they're what Angelica has, now that her family has been destroyed by her flippancy.

(The only thing that Josh can take comfort in is the fact that Angelica will never be pressed into being a whore. She's too brilliant, her mind too smart, for the President to feel like he needs to use her in the same way that he uses Josh and Wesley and Crumble. Angelica will be on the hook for designing Game Arenas or improving the Capitol's defenses, whatever her engineering skills will be put to, but she will never fill the Capitol's beds, no matter how old she gets- the President finds that beneath the role of his engineers.)  
  
And from there on out, it's the four of them, this unlikely family of killers and monsters, against the world.  
  
-

It’s the next year that Josh meets Eli Cardashyan.

Eli Cardashyan is not a boy that should have any chance of winning the Games. He doesn’t have Angelica’s genius or ruthlessness, doesn’t have Josh’s survival skills, doesn’t have Wesley’s skill with a blade. He’s not a Two-hardened killer or a One-trained seductress or a Four-eroded gladiator or a Ten-carved slaughterer. No, Eli Cardashyan is from the rather useless District of Six, the transporters, where he grew up without callouses on his hands or a catalogue of plants and animals in the back of his brain.

Eli Cardashyan should, by any stretch of the imagination, just be dead meat for the Careers to pick off. He should be Bloodbath fodder, an early Outlier death to get the Games going. He gets a six in training, is barely mentioned on recaps of the parade, is tiny and scrawny and insignificant.

And yet, when the platforms rise in an Arena formed out of ruins, Eli ducks away from his platform and isn't seen until the next day- not even on the sky projections that show the dead.

Josh, watching from the screens for his second Games, has his gaze strangely affixed to the Six-Boy who _just won’t die_. Josh and Crumble’s tributes, once again, die in the Bloodbath, but Josh doesn’t leave the room. Instead, he stays and watches as Eli sets himself up in a tucked-away room that’s close enough to the Cornucopia to watch but that’s camoflauged enough that no one can watch _him_.

At first, those who decide to watch the scrawny Six-Boy rather than the gleaming Career Pack are confused as to why Eli doesn’t sneak out for food at night, considering he’s so close to the Cornucopia. After all, he can't survive if he doesn't get food. But then they realize that Eli actually made himself a stash the first day, covered it up with the same camouflage that covers up his spot. Both his stash and his hiding spot are booby-trapped with combinations of Cornucopia weapons and random pieces of shrapnel found in the ruins of the Arena.

He gets forced out of his spot, of course, but it's only after the Career pack has cannibalized itself, leaving only the smaller outliers for Eli to pick off- a much easier task than fighting the trained killers that emerge from One, Two, and Four every year.

When Eli gets stabbed in the gut on the twenty-first day of his Games with just two other tributes left- one of which Eli took down after she'd stabbed him- Josh finds himself praying that the little underdog from Six will make it and join the Victors' circle. There's something so stubborn about the kid, something so painfully familiar, and Josh wants to meet him in person and learn more about him. He doesn't know if he could bear watching that spark inside of the Six-boy die.

-

Josh finally meets Eli in person at his Victory Interview. Eli is shaking hands with Angelica, as is custom for the new Victor and the previous Victor to do, as Josh did with Angelica herself last year. Eli looks no more impressive in person than he did onstage, and Josh can see the desperate little Six tribute underneath of all of the fancy Capitol clothing, under the swathes of golden fabric and layers of shimmering makeup.

And Josh- well, he wants to protect Eli just as he did Angelica. He wants to keep Eli as safe as possible, to get know him better, to take care of him.

Over the course of the next few weeks, over Eli's customary month in the Capitol before he heads back to his District, Josh makes sure to spend as much time with him as possible. He gets to know Eli, gets to know his interests, gets to know what about the Capitol fascinates the boy who won his Games not by brute strength but by cleverness.

And, well- there's nothing terribly strange about Eli.

Eli, as it turns out, is a wiz at the Capitol game of Pocket Monsters, played with cards labeled with the Victors and the skills and talents that helped them win their Games. It’s a grisly game that more often not brings up memories that taste of blood and acid, but it’s as satisfying a way to pass the time as sparring with Wesley is.

(Josh's card lists off his strengths as _swordsmanship_ and _intelligence._ He has to seriously question who designed that for him, as he clearly remembers his win as being a tribute to Crumble's maggots, his manipulation of the mutts, and just sheer desperation on his part.)

Eli also likes to shop- and shop he does, spending his endless Victor’s winnings to dress in the wildest Capitol clothing trends, stopping only short of giving himself piercings or tattoos or dying his hair. He doesn’t have a false finger like Josh does, able to be switched out, nor does he need one, but he definitely picks up plenty of accessories and jewelry that a poor boy from Six- a poor boy from any Outlier District- never could have afforded.

And as times passes, as the weeks pass and the galas continue and Eli hasn’t been called in for an “appointment-” Josh learns to breathe a little easier, to stop looking over his shoulders so much, to just enjoy spending time with Eli as he does with Wesley, Crumble, and Angelica.

He gets to actually stop worrying about Eli as much, and in the process gets to start noticing things he didn't before. Things like how captivating Eli is when he talks, speaking with a confidence that is often undeserved, like how he finds joy in the smallest of things, like how he teases Wesley and Angelica like a long-lost brother.

The last time Josh had a crush on someone, it was on a girl he asked out the week before he was Reaped. This, with Eli- who is a year younger than him, who is a killer like him, who knows where Josh disappears to every other night- this is incredibly different in ways that Josh doesn't know if he's ready to put to words.

And so he doesn't- not yet, at least. He doesn't, in any way, want to make anyone uncomfortable. Instead, Josh tucks those feelings away, instead content to be Eli's friend as the days pass and Josh adjusts to his new normal, with time split between Wesley, Crumble, Angelica, and Eli.

-

It is the next year- the year of the Seventy Fourth Games- that Josh’s past returns to haunt him in the form of Sam Dean, eighteen-years-old and on her final Reaping year and the fire of rebellion in her eyes. She is as bright as Josh remembers and twice as violent, voice as captivating as any One-Girl’s and right hook as vicious as any Two-Girl’s.

“Damn,” Wesley mutters as Sam slices through this year’s One-Boy with a sickle that was clearly meant for the hulking boy from Eleven. “Your girl might actually have a chance this year.”

Josh lets out a small snort for the girl he once had the absolute largest of crushes on before the Capitol taught him that the only people who understood him were the kids who had been ruined and broken like he had been.

“Bet you five credits your girl wins,” Eli says, appearing behind Josh’s chair. Six’s tributes choked on their own blood in the Bloodbath this year and Josh had expected Eli to leave and not come back, but to his surprise he feels Eli’s hand patting Josh’s shoulder, as if in reassurance despite the flippancy in Eli’s tone.

“I’m not betting against that,” Josh says, voice almost hushed as his gaze fixes on Sam, who was always the most clever of girls in his school, the one kid who could read anyone she talked to- a talent that any tribute would give their left limb for.

Sam looks up into the sky and hoists the sickle, as charming and bloodthirsty and camera-polished as any tribute trained in One or Two, and he knows, despite it only being the second day of the Games and the third year since Josh's win, that the Victor for the Seventy Fourth Games is going to come from Josh's former home.

-

And within three weeks, Josh is watching from the Mentor screens when Sam Dean, with only a single arm wound but her silver tribute uniform splattered in the blood of the tributes she's killed, raises her sickle as the Head Gamemaker announces her win to all of Panem.

-

“Y’know,” Eli says the night that Sam is set to be crowned. The two of them are standing next to each other in the front row of seats reserved for the Victors. Angelica is standing on Josh’s other side, Crumble and Wesley beyond her. “You should go after her.”

Josh’s brow furrows. Once upon a time, back in school, he liked Sam. He had a massive crush on her. He’d even asked her out, once, a week before his own Reaping- the worst mistake he’d ever made, considering what happened next, because there’s no chance he’d ever make that date. He’s changed too much since then. He’s become a different person- a different monster- and so has Sam. She’s clearly moved on, given the cool glance she’d given him at the Victor’s Interview, and so has he, both by circumstance and by choice.

“Eli, I don’t like her like that. Not anymore.”

“Dude, she’s _smoking_ ," Eli says, a strange, almost teasing lilt to his voice, and Josh looks at him, really looks him, as he's been looking at him for the past year.

"I like someone else," Josh whispers right before the ceremony begins, and he hears a quiet _oh_ from Eli, as if Eli has finally realized something. Josh hopes he does, that what he said is understood, that Eli understands without Josh having to explain it.

-

It is the night of Sam Dean’s crowning ceremony that Josh kisses Eli for the first time, in a hallway outside of the doors to both of their apartments. It is a kiss that has been building for months, now, through quick looks and simmering feelings and half-hidden touches.

Eli looks up, looks Josh in the eyes, something vulnerable in his gaze that Josh has never seen on Eli’s face before, and asks, voice neutral, no judgement: “Are you just using me to get over them?”

Eli doesn’t specify the pronoun, but Josh shakes his head. “No, I’m not,” he says, voice solid and true, and Eli nods and leans up on his toes and pulls Josh into a kiss and then into his apartment.

-

It is the night after Sam Dean’s crowning ceremony that Eli’s first appointment is made. Josh is in an appointment of his own, escorting Gamemaker Jordan Stem, who is in charge of engineering the weapons that are placed into the Arena, the fancier traps that kids use to kill every year.

Then, in the middle of the gala, as Josh is pretending to laugh at one of the Gamemaker's jokes, playing the simpering whore for the crowds, Josh notices Eli disappear- or, rather, he notices the lack of Eli's constant jabbering presence, his quips making Capitolites laugh at the little District clown.

And Josh knows what's happening, where Eli has disappeared to.

That night, stuck in the Gamemaker's bed, Josh doesn't feel terror for himself. He doesn't waste a single thought on what Gamemaker Jordan is making him do, the routine that he became stuck in years ago.

Instead, all of Josh's thoughts are on Eli, on their night together yesterday, on the time Eli is spending in some Capitolite's bed tonight- his first appointment, Josh is aware.

Josh's heart breaks and he has to wonder-

-

“Did you do it because you knew what was going to happen to you last night?” Josh asks, voice clear of any judgement, just a small bit of concern when he visits Eli’s apartment the next night. He finds Eli sitting on his sofa, spreading out his Pocket Monster cards, the new addition sitting shiny and golden beside Eli’s own black card.

Eli’s gaze flicks up to Josh’s. “I’d wanted to do it for months,” Eli says, licking his chapped lips, not an admission, not a denial.

And Josh sits down on the backless sofa opposite Eli, the sofa made of shiny white leather, the one they’d slept together on last night. “Okay,” he says, simple as that. Then he leans in and they kiss and it's gentler than any two killers should be, the two of them intertwined, all of their scars erased save Josh's amputated finger.

They break apart after a few moments to look each other in the eyes. Eli smiles and there's something painful about his smirk, something understanding of pain and brokenness and the things you have to give up in order to survive.

-

A lesson that every child in Panem learns before the day they turn eighteen is this: you have to learn to work with the cards you were dealt. You have to learn to make the most of whatever situation you find yourself stuck in.

-

The night after that finds Eli in Josh's apartment, part of the cuddle pile, part of the family.

"Get the fuck in here, Cardashyan," Wesley says when Eli shows up to the apartment, patting the spot on the giant mattress in between Josh and Wesley, and Josh grins as Eli shrugs and dives in. On Josh's other side Angelica still stays tucked, even long after her mother died. It's the spot Angelica claimed as her own and the one that none of them are willing or brave enough to cross her on. Beyond Angelica is Crumble, who the little girl has kind of reverse-adopted as a mother of sorts, the mentor who saved Josh's life in the Games.

And so here they are, this broken Victor family. Here is the tiny family that Josh has managed to build here in the Capitol, five Victors facing the Capitol with what little ways to escape that they have managed to find in the inescapable Arena. Photography and action movies and shopping and engineering and biology experiments and Pocket Monsters and family dinners and the occasional cuddle pile, all to distract from the horrors of their pasts and present and future. Josh and the boy he loves and the siblings he's adopted and the Mentor who helped him through his nightmares.

Despite everything, despite the whoring and the forced sex and the child-killing- well, Josh's life isn't perfect, but it is about as good as he ever could have hoped for it to be from the moment his name was pulled from the Reaping bowl.

-

It's on Sam's last day in the Capitol before returning home to live in the Victor's Village that she pulls Josh aside. They're both right at the train station, the last Victor from District 12 escorting the newest one back to the train to go. A touching picture they make, the two of them, and Josh knows the Capitol gossip cycles to know that they'll take after this story, turn it into something he once wished it had been, years before he'd met an ambitious, hungry boy from District 6 who he'd fallen in love with.

"District 13's still around," she whispers in his ear, and everything explodes in much the same way as it did the day he was Reaped. "There's a Rebellion coming." Then Sam leans back, all smiles, all bright eyes as if she hasn't just upended his entire world. Then she backs up and leaves to step onto the train, taking any further knowledge with her, and leaving Josh to stare after her like an utter schmuck.

-

So here's the thing: you have to work with the cards you were dealt with is a lesson that Sam Dean never learnt.

-

The Quarter Quell announcement comes on a cool winter day. The five of them are all in Crumble (and basically Angelica's, from the amount of time she spends there)'s apartment, Eli and Josh curled up together, Wesley sitting in Crumble's armchair, and Angelica and Crumble stretched out on the floor, playing with a few of Crumble's little insect figurines.

On the television screen, the President smiles that smile of his that they all long ago learned not to trust and says: "The rules for this Quell are simple. To show that no one is above the mercy of the Capitol, not even the most powerful among the District citizens, the tributes for each District will be Reaped from the existing pool of Victors."

Someone is screaming, now, someone screaming and shouting and throwing books around the room and there is sobbing and through it all, Josh only snaps out of his reverie when he hears Eli's soft gasp of pain. Josh looks down to find that he had been squeezing Eli's hand and he immediately lets go, running his thumb gently over Eli's knuckles to apologize. Eli gives him the smallest, most painful of smiles in return.

"Fuck," Wesley says softly, and Josh looks up at him. Out of all of them, he's the only one not guaranteed to go in. Eli, Josh, and Angelica are all their District's only Victors of their gender, and Crumble- well, Josh knows that Crumble would volunteer for Sam even if the Reaping wasn't rigged, no matter how much the rest of them protested. It's just how Crumble is.

They are going back in the Arena. Eli, Angelica, Josh, Crumble- they are all going back in and there is only the slimmest likelihood that even one of them will make it out alive. (Though if Josh was placing bets, he'd bet on Angelica. She's too smart, too ruthless, too desperate for survival, to not win.)

Josh is going to die in the Quell, and so is Eli, and everything Josh has tried to build is falling apart in his shaking fingers because he never should have trusted the President to let them live.

So he turns to Wesley and he says, "Don't you fucking dare Volunteer."

Wesley's eyes go wide. "What?"

"Whoever wins- and we have to make sure that it's one of us- they can't go on alone."

Wesley's jaw drops. "I can't let you guys go in alone, Josh-"

"We won't be alone," Josh says, and next to him, Eli nods, thankfully on the same page as Josh.

"Help us train, Wesley," Eli says, "Help us that way. And then, when one of us wins-" And Eli glances at Angelica for just a moment and Josh knows that Eli knows that it won't be either of them making it out, that it will be the youngest among them getting the chance to start again in that fourth Arena that she'll find herself in after the Quell. "Well, you'll be there for them."

Wesley clearly doesn't like the suggestion. He looks about ready to argue, to open his mouth and fight, but then he looks to Angelica and his lips purse. "Fine," he says, "I'll let some other Two Victor Volunteer in my place. Panem knows we've got enough male Victors to take the title."

And Josh, despite knowing he's had his death warrant signed for him, smiles because at least one of them won't be dying in the Games.

-

Over the next few months, they train. All of them. They spend as much time as possible in the gym and the survival rooms, learning about plants needed to survive, getting engineering training from Angelica and swordsmanship training from Wesley and camouflage training from Eli and years of mutt study from Josh and knowledge of basic healing techniques from Crumble.

And in between training moments, Josh spends lots of time with his family and with Eli. He takes the time he can get in between appointments that now seem pointless to squeeze in as much happiness as possible, kissing Eli and cuddling with the family and playing chess with Crumble and sparring with Wesley and having dinner together and just pretending, as much as possible, like they're all just moving one day at a time towards their collective deaths.

-

The Rebellion comes to the Capitol the night Josh is set to have his first appointment with President Burr. Apparently the grey-haired president had finally expended his interest in Crumble and District One's Victor Jayden Hoyles, the winner of the 68th Games, and had decided to move onto the next Victor he desired- Josh himself.

It's the night of the Opening Ceremonies of the Games, the night of the worst appointment of Josh's life, and Josh feels like he's going to vomit as he stands in the chariot, knowing that he will die within two weeks.

 _I hope Sam kills you_ , Josh thinks murderously, mutinously, as he follows the President to his appointment, leaving his beloved Mentor outside hallway that leads to the President's rooms. _I hope she slits your throat for what you did to Crumble, what you turned the rest of us into, children to killers and monsters and whores._

But before Josh has even stripped a single item of clothing off of his body, the President keels over, dead. The door reopens behind him, and Crumble stands there, dark-hair-haloed with a small can of- are those _nuts_ in her hand?

Crumble shakes the can with a smile. "He's allergic," she says, voice almost sing-song as if she hasn't just committed assassination. Then she reaches out and grabs Josh's hand. "Sam and the family are waiting for us at the hovercraft landing deck," she says as she pulls him along, pulling him away from the pit of despair he was nearly just thrown into.

"How long has this been planned?" Josh nearly gasps as he sees them all, dressed not in Capitol costumes but plain District clothing. It's the first time he's seen Eli in such plain clothing since he watched the Reapings for the Seventy Third Games, since before Eli started to spend all of his Victor's winnings on clothing and accessories.

"For far longer than you think, Wheeler," Sam says even as Crumble passes Josh off to Eli as they all pile onto the hovercraft, strapping in quickly so it can take off for the apparent District 13. "We just needed an opportunity to get Crumble close to the President's room without her being inside of it, so that way she could poison him."

"Wait a minute," Josh says, "So you were using me as bait?"

Sam shrugs. "You're really good bait, what can I say?"

There's something that flashes in Eli's eyes, something that hits far too close to home in Sam's words that Josh knows Sam will never understand like Wesley and Josh and Crumble and Eli do- the pain of being stuck under Capitolite bodies, in Capitolite beds, being powerless despite being so powerful in an Arena and knowing that there's no way out.

Speaking of which- Josh looks over at Wesley, whose gaze is fixed out the rear-facing bulletproof windows of the hovercraft as it flies away from the Capitol. Wesley has left something in the Capitol (or maybe someone) that he cares about, Josh knows, and he has to wonder who or what it is. Next to Josh, blessedly, beautifully alive, is Eli, who should have died within the month but will be surviving. Across from them sits Angelica, who points out the window, describing things to Crumble, who smiles back and runs her fingers through Angelica's hair.

Josh has spent the past few months convinced that they were all going to die, has had a million and one nightmares about the mutts or other Victors tearing apart the bodies of his family, and for a moment he almost thinks that he's just imagining all of this, that he hasn't actually survived but is still in the President's bed, making up fantasies to save himself from the reality of what he's doing.

But then Eli squeezes his hand and Josh looks at him and finds him looking back at Josh, the smallest of smirks on his face. "We're gonna fucking destroy them," Eli says, as confident as always, as confident as he was the day Caesar Flickerman asked him what he thought his chances were of winning and Eli had said _Just watch and you'll see._

And so Josh can't help but believe Eli, even more than he ever believed Sam, because when Eli puts his mind to something, he can do anything.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you guys liked this! I return to Panem every couple of months or so for a new fandom and I had some fun doing it again this time, with a new Netflix show about the apocalypse that felt almost perfect to stick into a Hunger Games AU, just like the first show I made into a HG! AU.
> 
> Leave a comment if you liked it! Once again, this fandom is tiny and every comment is a gift (and a reminder that I'm not the only one here)!


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